Beautiful World, Where Are You(27)

Eileen: hey, did you not invite Deirdre P to the wedding after all?

Within thirty seconds she had received a reply.

Lola: Lol. Hope mammy and daddy are paying you good money to do their dirty work for them.

Reading this message, Eileen drew her brows together and exhaled briskly through her nose. She tapped the reply button and began typing.

Eileen: are you seriously disinviting family members from your wedding now? do you realise how spiteful and immature that is?

She closed the message application then and reopened the map. When instructed by the dot on the screen, she pressed the stopping bell and made her way downstairs. After thanking the driver she got off the bus, and with frequent cautious glances at her phone began to walk back up the street in the direction the bus had come, past a hairdresser’s, a women’s clothing boutique, over a pedestrian crossing, until a flag appeared on-screen

with a line of blue text reading: You have arrived at your destination. She deposited her chewed gum back into its foil wrapper then and threw it into a nearby waste bin.

The entrance was through a cramped porch, leading onto a front bar, and behind that a private room with couches and low tables, lit entirely by red bulbs. The appearance was quaintly domestic, like a large private living room from an earlier era, but drenched in lurid red light. Eileen was greeted at once by several friends and acquaintances, who put their glasses down and rose from sofas to embrace her. At the sight of a man named Darach she said brightly: Happy birthday, you! After that she ordered a drink and then sat down on one of the faintly sticky leather couches beside her friend Paula. Music was playing from speakers affixed to the walls and a bathroom door swung open at the end of the room periodically, releasing a brief flood of white light before swinging shut again. Eileen checked her phone and saw a new message from Lola.

Lola: Hmmm do I really want to hear about how immature I am from someone who’s stuck in a shitty job making no money and living in a kip at age 30......

Eileen stared at the screen for a while and then pocketed her phone again. Beside her a woman named Roisin was telling a story about a broken window in her street-level apartment which her landlord had refused to fix for over a month. After that, everyone began sharing horror stories about the rental market. An hour, two hours, elapsed in this way. Paula ordered another round of drinks. Silver platters of hot food were brought out from behind the bar: cocktail sausages, potato wedges, chicken wings glistening in wet sauce. At ten to eleven, Eileen got up, went to the bathroom and took her phone from

her pocket again. There were no new notifications. She opened a messaging app and tapped on Simon’s name, displaying a thread from the previous evening.

Eileen: home safe?

Simon: Yes, was just about to text you

Simon: I may have brought you a present

Eileen: really??

Simon: You’ll be glad to know the shop on the ferry was doing a special offer on duty free Toblerone Simon: Are you doing anything tomorrow night?

Eileen: actually yes for once...

Eileen: darach is having a birthday thing, sorry

Simon: Ah ok

Simon: Can I see you during the week then?

Eileen: yes please

That was the final message in the thread. She used the toilet, washed her hands, reapplied lipstick in the mirror, and then blotted the lipstick using a square of toilet roll.

Someone knocked on the outside of the bathroom door and she said aloud: One second.

She was staring wanly into the mirror. With her hands she pulled the features of her face downward, so the bones of her skull stood out harsh and strange under the fluorescent white ceiling light. The person was knocking on the door again. Eileen put her bag on her shoulder, unlocked the door and went back out to the bar. Sitting down next to Paula, she picked up the half-empty drink she had left on the table. All the ice had melted. What are we talking about? she said. Paula said they were talking about communism. Everyone’s on it now, said Eileen. It’s amazing. When I first started going around talking about Marxism, people laughed at me. Now it’s everyone’s thing. And to all these new people trying to make communism cool, I would just like to say, welcome aboard, comrades. No hard feelings. The future is bright for the working class. Roisin raised her glass then and so did Darach. Eileen was smiling and seemed slightly drunk.

Are the platters gone? she asked. A man named Gary who was seated opposite said: No one here is really working class, though. Eileen rubbed at her nose. Yeah, she said.

Well, Marx would disagree with you, but I know what you’re saying.

People love to claim that they’re working class, Gary said. No one here is actually from a working-class background.

Right, but everyone here works for a living and pays rent to a landlord, said Eileen.

Raising his eyebrows, Gary said: Paying rent doesn’t make you working class.

Yeah, working doesn’t make you working class. Spending half your pay cheque on rent, not owning any property, getting exploited by your boss, none of it makes you working class, right? So what does, having a certain accent, is it?

With an irritated laugh he answered: Do you think you can go driving around in your dad’s BMW, and then turn around and say you’re working class because you don’t get along with your boss? It’s not a fashion, you know. It’s an identity.

Eileen swallowed a mouthful of her drink. Everything is an identity now, she said. And you don’t know me, by the way. I don’t know why you’re saying no one here is working class, you don’t know anything about me.